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Slains Castle by
Lady Blanche
Murphy

In traveling over the old lands of Europe
one is sometimes apt to think
more of historical and genealogical traditions
than of the natural beauties or
peculiarities of the country. The old
landmarks of a nation, whether monuments
built by the hand of man or archives
carefully preserved by him, tell
us of its growth, just as the strata of the
mountain tell of its progress to the geologist;
and as every successive layer has
some relation both to its predecessor and
its successor, so the traditions of each
generation have a perceptible influence
upon the moral development of the generation
following. Every nation is thus
the growing fruit of its own history, and
every visible step of the grand ladder
of facts that has led up to the present
result must needs have for a student of
human nature an intrinsic interest.

This comes very clearly before my
mind as I think of Slains Castle (Aberdeen),
a massive crown of granite set
on the brow of the rocks of the German
Ocean, and the seat of one of those old
Scottish families whose origin is hidden
away among the suggestive mists of
tradition.

Slains Castle stands alone, a giant
watchman upon giant cliffs, built up
only one story high, on account of the
tremendous winds that prevail there in
spring and autumn, and cased with the
gray Aberdeen granite of the famous
quarries near by. The surrounding
country is as bare and uninviting as one
could imagine; the road from Aberdeen
(twenty miles) is bleak and stony; the
young trees near the castle are stunted,
and in many cases disfigured by the inroads
of hungry cows among their lower
branches, and a damp veil of mist hangs
perpetually over the scene, softening the
landscape, but sometimes depressing the
spirits. As the hours pass the place
grows on you: a weird beauty begins to
loom up from among the mist-wreaths,
the jagged rocks, the restless waves, and
you forget the desolate moor, which in
itself displays attractions you will realize
later, in the grandeur of the desolate sea.

The original building is of the time of
James VI. (of Scotland), and is due to
Francis, earl of Erroll, whose more
ancient castle, bearing the same name,
was destroyed by the king to punish his
vassal for the part he had taken in a rebellion.
In the seventeenth century Earl
Gilbert made great improvements in it,
and early in the eighteenth Earl Charles
added the front. In 1836 it was rebuilt
by Earl William George, the father of the
present owner, with the exception of the
lower part of the original tower. In this
there used to be in olden times an oubliette
in which unhappy prisoners were
let down. All at first appeared dark
around them, but when they had thankfully
assured themselves that they at
last stood upon solid ground, they would
look about them and presently descry a
line of fitful light coming from a door
ajar in their dungeon. The poor victims
would then go in haste to this door, pull
it open and, blinded by the sudden light,
step out upon the green slope terminating
quickly in a precipice, which went sheer
down to the sea.

The rest of the house is built around
a large covered piazza, intersected by
corridors where pictures, armor and all
kinds of old family relics decorate the
walls. The drawing-room is on the very
edge of the rock, and on stormy days
the flocks of uneasy sea-gulls almost
flap their wings against its window-panes,
while the clouds of spray dash up against
them in miniature waterfalls. The rocks
in the immediate neighborhood of the
castle are rugged in the extreme, here
and there rent by a gigantic fissure
reaching far inland, and up which the
foaming waters gurgle continually as if
in impatience of their narrow bounds,
now jutting far into the sea like a Titanic
staircase and thickly matted with coarse
sea-weed, and again reared up on high,
a sheer glistening wall, with not a cranny
for the steadiest foot, and with Niagaras
of spray for ever veiling its smooth, unchanging
face. In wonderful hollows
you will come upon pools of green water
with sea-anemones, delicate sea-weed of
pink, yellow or purple hue, and gem-like
shells resting on a bottom of clearest
sand; and while the waves are roaring
on every side, and flinging their dampness
into your very face, these fairy
pools will lie at your feet without a
breath or ripple on their surface.

The most magnificent of these rocks
is one called in Gaelic "Dun-Bug"
("Yellow Rock"), the favorite haunt of
the white sea-gulls. It stands alone, as
if torn from the land and hurled into the
tossing waves by some giant hand. Two
hundred feet in height and a thousand
in circumference, it forms a natural arch,
being pierced from its base upward by
an opening that widens as it ascends.
The waves dash through it with terrific
violence, and the very sight of its grim
splendor conjures up a vision of shipwreck
and danger. Scott has made mention
of it in The Antiquary, and Johnson
in his Journey to the Hebrides, recalling
the grandeur of the rocky coast of Slains,
has said that though he could not wish
for a storm, still as storms, whether wished
for or not, will sometimes happen, he
would prefer to look at them from Slains
Castle. These rocks and the caves that
alternate with them were once famous
as a smuggling rendezvous, and as such
Scott has again immortalized them in his
Guy Mannering. The Crooked Mary,
a noted lugger, had many an adventure
along this coast during the last century.
The skipper's arrival was eagerly looked
for at certain stated times, the preconcerted
signal was given by him, and the
inhabitants bestirred themselves with
commendable haste. All ordinary business
was immediately suspended: men
might be seen stealing along from house
to house, or a fisher-girl, bareheaded and
barefooted, would hurry to the neighboring
village, and deliver a brief message
which to a bystander would sound very
like nonsense, but which nevertheless
was well understood by the person to
whom it was given. Soon after a plaid
or blanket might be seen spread out, as
if to dry, upon the top of a peat-stack.
Other beacons, not calculated to draw
general notice, but sufficiently understood
by the initiated, soon made their
appearance, telegraphing the news from
place to place. As soon as the evening
began to close in the Crooked Mary
would be observed rapidly approaching
the land, and occasionally giving out
signals indicating the creek into which
she meant to run. Both on sea and
land hairbreadth escapes were the rule
rather than the exception, and it is related
of one of the Crooked Mary's confederates
on shore, poor Philip Kennedy,
that one night, while clearing the way for
the cargo just landed from the contraband
trader's hold, he was simply murdered
by the excise-officers. The heavy
cart laden with the cargo was yet some
distance behind, and Kennedy with
some dastardly companions was slowly
going forward to ascertain if all was
safe, when three officers of the customs
suddenly made their unwelcome appearance.
Brave as a lion, Kennedy attacked
two of them, and actually succeeded
for a time in keeping them down in his
powerful grasp, while he called to his
party to secure the third. They, however,
thinking prudence the better part
of valor, decamped ignominiously, and
the enemy remained master of the brave
man's life. Anderson, the third officer,
was observed to hold up his sword to the
moon, as if to ascertain if he were using
the edge, and then to bring it down with
accurate aim and tremendous force upon
the smuggler's skull. Strange to say,
Kennedy, streaming with blood, actually
succeeded in reaching Kirkton of Slains,
nearly a quarter of a mile away, but
expired a few moments after his arrival.
His last words were: "If all had been
true as I was, the goods would have
been safe, and I should not have been
bleeding to death." The brave fellow
was buried in the churchyard of Slains,
where a plain stone marks his grave,
and bears the simple inscription, "To
the memory of Philip Kennedy, in Ward,
who died the 19th of December, 1798.
Aged 38."

My own earliest recollections of the
grand, desolate old castle are derived,
not from my first visit to it made in infancy,
but from the descriptions of one
whose home it was during a brief but
intensely observant period of childhood.
There came one day a storm such as
seldom even on that coast lashes up the
gray, livid ocean. The waves, as far out
as sight could reach, were one mass of
foam, and the ghastly lightning flashed
upon the torn sails of a ship as near
destruction as it well could be. Cries
came up from below in the brief pauses
of the storm, and above lanterns were
quickly carried to and fro, while pale
attendants hurriedly and silently obeyed
the signals of a more collected master.
The occupants of the castle hardly knew
to what its chambers might be destined—whether
to receive the dead or to afford
rest to the saved. Beds, fires and cordials
were in readiness, and strong men
bore dread burdens up dizzy paths leading
from beneath. The ship broke in
pieces on the merciless rocks, and many
a drowned sailor went down to meet the
army of his fellow-victims of all times
who no doubt lay sleeping in the submarine
caves of Slains. Those who survived
soon disappeared, full of gratitude for
the timely relief offered them at the castle,
but one old man remained. He was
never known by any other name than
"Monsieur," and was beloved by every
individual member of the household. A
French émigré of the old school, with
the dainty, gallant ways of the ancien
régime, he still clung to the dress of his
earlier days, and wore a veritable queue,
silk stockings and buckled shoes. For
some time he remained a welcome guest
in the "red chamber," where the host's
little children would sometimes join him
and play with his watch and jeweled
baubles. But one day poor little "Monsieur"
sickened, and the tiny feet that
had made such haste to run to him, now
trod the corridor softly and bore a baby-nurse
to the gentle invalid. It was a
high and coveted reward for the little
girls to carry "Monsieur's" medicine to
his bedside, and everything that kindness
and hospitality could suggest was
equally lavished on him; but his feeble
life, which had no doubt received a
shock from the shipwreck it had barely
escaped, went out peacefully like the
soft flame of a lamp.

Slains Castle had many gentle and
pleasant memories about it, as well as
its traditional horrors, and among these
were many connected with the history
of the old family that owned it. In one
of the corridors hangs the picture of
James, Lord Hay, a fair-haired, sunny-faced
boy, tall and athletic, standing
with a cricket-bat in his hand. He
would have been earl of Erroll had he
lived, but if we follow him in his short
life from classic Eton to the field of
Quatre-Bras, we shall find him again, on
a bright June day in 1815, lying as if
asleep, as fair and noble-looking as before,
but silent in death. Simple Flemish
peasants stand in a group around
him, awed and admiring, asking each
other if this beautiful youth is an angel
fallen from heaven, or only a mortal
man slain for the Honor of his country.
His was a noble death, and worthy of
the suggestive memento of his early boyhood
before which we stood just now in
the corridor of Slains Castle.

A little farther down this corridor,
which to all intents and purposes is a
family picture-gallery, we shall be forced
to stop before the portrait of a dark
woman, masculine and resolute, not
beautiful nor like the handsome race of
the Hays, of which she was yet the last
direct representative. This is the famous
Countess Mary, one of the central
figures of the family traditions. The
Hays were hereditary lords high constable
of Scotland, and also one of the few
Scottish families in which titles and offices,
as well as lands, are transmitted
through the female line. So this Countess
Mary found herself, at the death of
her brother, countess of Erroll in her
own right and lord high constable of
Scotland. In one of the two pictures of
her at Slains, if I remember right, she
is represented with the bâton of her
office, with which badge she also appeared
at court before her marriage (after
this it was borne by her husband in
the character of her deputy). Her husband
was a commoner, a Mr. Falconer
of Dalgaty, whose reported history in
connection with her is curious and deserves
to be told, though the old tradition
is moulded into so many different
forms that it is very difficult to disentangle
the truth from its manifold embellishments.
Toward the beginning of
the eighteenth century this intrepid and
independent lady fell in love with Mr.
Falconer, who at first did not seem eager
to return or notice her affection. High-strung
and chivalric by nature, she did
not droop and pine under her disappointment,
but vowed to herself that she
would bring him to her feet. Mr. Falconer
coner left the country after some time,
and went to London. The Countess
Mary also traveled south the same year,
and no news of her was heard at Slains
for some time. Meanwhile, she and
Mr. Falconer met, but unknown to the
latter, who about the same time became
acquainted with a very dashing young
cavalier, evidently a man of high birth
and standing, but resolutely bent on
mystifying his friends as to his origin.
The two saw each other frequently, and
were linked by that desultory companionship
of London life which sometimes
indeed ripens into friendship, but as
often ends in a sudden quarrel. Such
was the end of this acquaintance, and
one day some trifling difference having
occurred between the friends, a cartel
reached Mr. Falconer couched in very
haughty though perfectly courteous language.
These things were every-day
matters in such times, and very nonchalantly
the challenged went in the early
morning to the appointed place to meet
the challenger. Here the versions of
the story differ. Some say that Mr. Falconer
and his antagonist fought, but
without witnesses; that the former got
the worst of the encounter, and remained
at the other's mercy; that then, and
not before, the Countess Mary made herself
known to him and gave him his
choice—a thrust from her sword or a
speedy marriage with herself. Others
say that it was before the duel that she
astonished her lover by this discovery,
and that the choice she gave him was
between marriage and ridicule.1

The fact of her marriage, and that it
proved a happy one, is certain. Mr.
Falconer dropped his own name to assume
that of Hay. The countess was a
devoted Jacobite and an earnest churchwoman.
When Presbyterianism had got
the upper hand in Scotland, and was repaying
church persecutions with terrible
interest, a Mr. Keith was appointed to
the Anglican parish of Deer. This was
within the Erroll jurisdiction, and it was
not long before the zealous Countess
Mary came to the rescue of the congregation,
who had assembled for some time
in an old farmhouse. In 1719 or '20 she
had the upper floor of a large granary
fitted up for their accommodation, and
this afforded them a grateful shelter for
more than a quarter of a century. Of
this same parish of Deer a curious story
is told in the local annals, showing how
conservative and tenacious of traditions
the north of Scotland still was in 1711.
The skirmish to which it relates goes by
the quaint title of the "Rabbling of Deer,"
and is thus reported: "Some people of
Aberdeen, in conjunction with the presbytry of
Deer, to the number of seventy
horse or thereby, assembled on the twenty-third
of March, 1711, to force in a
Presbyterian teacher in opposition to the
parish; but the presbytry and their satellites
were soundly beat off by the people,
not without blood on both sides."

There was little of the martyr about
the Scot of that warlike day, and most
emphatically and literally did he show
himself a "soldier of the Lord."

The aisle of the old church of Slains
contains the graves of Countess Mary
and her husband, with an epitaph in
Latin, of which the following is a translation:
"Beneath this tombstone there
are buried neither gold nor silver, nor
treasures of any kind, but the bodies
of the most chaste wedded pair, Mary,
countess of Erroll, and Alexander Hay
of Dalgaty, who lived peaceably and
lovingly in matrimony for twenty-seven
years. They wished to be buried here
beside each other, and pray that this
stone may not be moved nor their remains
disturbed, but that these be allowed
to rest in the Lord until He shall call
them to the happy resurrection of that
life which they expect from the mercy
of God and the merits of the Saviour
and Lord Jesus Christ."

The central figure, however, in the
history of the Hays of Erroll, and that
which no one who bears the name of
Hay can think of without a thrill of
pride, is the Lord Kilmarnock who fell,
in 1746, a victim to the last unsuccessful
but heroic rising in favor of the Stuarts.
I have heard it whispered as an instance
of "second sight" that some years before
he had any reason to anticipate
such a death he was once startled by the
ghostly opening of a door in the apartment
where he was sitting alone, and by
the apparition, horribly distinct and realistic,
of a bloody head rolling slowly
toward him across the room; till it rested
at his feet. The glassy eyes were upturned
to his, and the bonny locks were
clotted with blood: it was as if it had
just rolled from under the axe of the
executioner; and the features, plainly
discerned, were his own!

His part in the rising of 1745 belongs
to history, but his personal demeanor
concerns my narrative more closely.
All the contemporary accounts are loud
in praise of his beauty and elegance of
person, his refinement of manner, his
variety of accomplishments; and Scott,
in his Tales of a Grandfather, relates a
curious circumstance concerning his fine
presence at the moment of his execution.
A lady of fashion who had never seen
him before, and who was herself, I believe,
the wife of one who had much to
do with Lord Kilmarnock's death-warrant,
seeing him pass on his way to the
block, formed a most violent attachment
for his person, "which in a less serious
affair would have, been little less than a
ludicrous frenzy."

The grace and dignity of his appearance,
together with the resignation and
mildness of his address, melted all the
spectators to tears as they gathered round
the fatal Tower prison to witness his
death: the chaplain who attended him
says his behavior was so humble and resigned
that even the executioner burst
into tears, and was obliged to use strong
cordials to support him in his terrible
duty. Lord Kilmarnock himself was
deeply impressed by the sight of the
block draped in funereal black, the plain
coffin placed just beside it, the sawdust
that was so disposed as speedily to suck
up the bloody traces of the execution,
and the sea of faces surrounding the
open enclosure kept for this his last
earthly ordeal. It was certainly not from
fear that he recoiled, but his proud, sensitive,
melancholy nature was thrilled
through every nerve by this dread publicity,
and we cannot wonder that, leaning
heavily on the arm of a trusty friend,
he should have whispered, almost with
his last breath, the simple words, "Home,
this is dreadful!"

One who was the lineal descendant of
this earl of Kilmarnock, and whose only
brother long bore the same blood-stained
and laurel-wreathed title, has often
told me of the strange link that bridged
the chasm of four generations from 1746
to 1829, and bound her recollections to
those of a living witness of the scene.
She was so young as not to have any
distinct impression of other events that
happened at the same time, but this lived
in her mind because of the importance
and solemnity with which her own parents
had purposely invested it in her
eyes. One day, at Brighton, this little
great-great-grand-daughter of the Lord
Kilmarnock of 1745 was brought down
from the nursery to see an old, more
than octogenarian, soldier who had distinguished
himself in recent wars, and
reached the rank of general. This tottering
old man, more than fourscore
years of age, took the wee maiden of
hardly four upon his knee, and told her
in simple words the story she was never
to forget—how he had been a tiny boy
running to school on the day of the
execution of the "rebel lords," and how,
seeing a vast, eager crowd all setting
toward the Tower quarter, he was tempted
to play truant, and flinging his satchel
of books over his shoulder, had pushed
his way as far as the great state prison.
Then of his frantic efforts to secure a
point of vantage whence to see the great
death-pageant—of his childish admiration
for the handsome, manly form of
Lord Kilmarnock, of his enthusiasm
when Lord Balmerino, the other victim,
had cried in a loud voice, "Long live
the king!" and of the fascination he
could not resist which led his eyes from
the shining axe and the draped block to
the auburn locks of the prisoner, and
soon after to his bleeding head laid low
in the sawdust around the coffin. All
this the old veteran told thrillingly, the
shadow of a boy's awed recollection
mingling with his Scottish exultation as
a compatriot of the victim, and even
with a touch of humor as he recalled
the domestic scolding which marked the
truant's return.

In the charter-room at Slains Castle,
where the records, genealogies, private
journals, official deeds, etc. of the family
are kept, one might find ample material
for curious investigation of our forefathers'
way of living. Among other
papers is a kind of inventory headed,
"My Ladies Petition anent the Plenissing
within Logg and Slanis." The list
of things wanted for Slains speaks chiefly
of brass pots, pewter pans and oil
barrels, but, the "plenissing" of Logg
(another residence of the Errolls),
"quhilk my Ladie desyris as eftir followis,
quhilk extendis skantlie (scantily)
to the half," contains an ample list of
curtains of purple velvet, green serge,
green-and-red drugget and other stuffs
hardly translatable to the modern understanding,
and shows that in those days
women were not more backward than
now in plaguing their liege lords about
upholstery and millinery. But the most
amusing and natural touch of all is in
the endorsement, hardly gallant, but
very conjugal, made by the fair petitioner's
husband: "To my Ladyes gredie
(greedy) and vnressonable (unreasonable)
desyris it is answerit...." Here
follows a distinct admission that the furniture
of both houses, put together, is
too little to furnish the half of each of
them, and therefore nothing can be
spared from Logie to "pleniss" Slains.

The family coat-of-arms commemorates
to this day the poetical genealogy
of the Hays. Its supporters are two
tall, naked peasants bearing plough-yokes
on their shoulders: the crest is a
falcon, while the motto is also significant—"Serva
jugum." Scottish tradition
tells us that in 980, when the Danes had
shamefully routed the Scots at Loncarty,
a little village near Perth, and were pursuing
the fugitives, an old man and his
two stalwart sons, who were ploughing
in a field close by, were seized with indignation,
and, shouldering their plough-yokes,
placed themselves resolutely in a
narrow defile through which their countrymen
must pass to evade a second
slaughter by the victors. As the Scots
came on the three patriots opposed their
passage, crying shame upon them for
cowards and no men, and exhorting
them thus: "Why! would ye rather be
certainly killed by the heathen Danes
than die in arms for your own land?"
Ashamed, and yet encouraged, the fugitives
rallied, and with the three dauntless
peasants at their head fell upon their
astonished pursuers, and fought with
such desperation that they turned defeat
into victory. Kenneth III., the Scottish
king, instantly sent for the saviors of his
army, gave them a large share of the
enemy's spoils, and made them march
in triumph into Perth with their bloody
plough-yokes on their shoulders. More
than that, he ennobled them, and gave
them a fair tract of land, to be measured,
according to the fashion of that day, by
the flight of a falcon. From the name
of this land the Hays came to be called;
lords of Erroll, and it is said that the
Hawk Stone at St. Madoes, Perthshire,
which stands upon what is known to
have been the ancient boundary of the
possessions of the Hays, is the identical
stone from which the lucky falcon started.
It was left standing as a special
memorial of the defeat of the Danes at
Loncarty. Another stone famous in the
Hay annals, and conspicuously placed
in front of the entrance to Slains Castle,
is said to be the same on which the
peasant general rested after his toilsome
leadership in the battle.

Our walks over the bleak moors on
one side, with the heather in bloom and
the blackberries in low—lying purple
clusters fringing the granite rocks, were
sometimes rendered more interesting,
though more dangerous, by the sudden
falling of a thick white mist. Slowly it
would come at first, gathering little filmy
clouds together as it were, and hovering
over the gray sea in curling tufts, and
then, growing strong and dense, would
swoop down irresistibly, till what was
clear five minutes before was impenetrably
walled off, and one seemed to stand
alone in a silent world of ghosts. Or
again, our walks would take us on the
other side, over the Sands of Forvie, a
desolate tract where nothing grows save
the coarse grass called bent by the Scotch,
and where the wearied eye rests on nothing
but mounds of shifting sand, drearily
shaped into the semblance of graves
by the keen winds that blow from over
the German Ocean.

This miniature desert, tradition says,
was an Eden four hundred years ago,
but a wicked guardian robbed the helpless
orphan heiresses of it by fraud and
violence, and the maidens threw a spell
or weird upon it in these terms:

"Yf evyr maydens malysone

Did licht upon drye lande,

Let nocht bee funde in Furvye's glebys

Bot thystl, bente and sande."

I must not forget the "Bullers," a
natural curiosity which is the boast of
the neighborhood of Slains, and is moreover
connected with a feat performed by
a former guest and friend of one of the
lords of Erroll. We drove there in a
large party, and passed through an untidy,
picturesque little fishing-hamlet on
our way, where the women talked to
each other in Gaelic as they stood barefooted
at the doors of their cabins, and
where the children looked so hardy, fearless
and determined that the wildest
dreams of future possible achievement
seemed hardly unlikely of realization in
connection with any one of them.

"The Pot," as it is locally called, is a
huge rocky cavern, irregularly circular
and open to the sky, into which the sea
rushes through a natural archway. A
narrow pathway is left quite round the
basin, from which one looks down a
sheer descent of more than a hundred
feet; but this is so dangerous, the earth
and coarse grass that carpet it so deceptive
and loose, and the wind almost always
so high on this spot, that only the
most foolhardy or youngest of visitors
would dare in broad daylight to attempt
to walk round it. Yet it is on record
that the duke of Richmond, some sixty
or seventy years ago, made a bet at Lord
Erroll's dinner-table that he would ride
round it after dark. He accomplished
the feat in safety. His picture, life-size,
hangs in the dining-room to this day,
and as he is represented standing in all
the pride of a vigorous manhood by the
side of his beautiful charger, he does not
seem to belie the reputation which this
incident created for him in the old district
of Buchan.

The peasants of this wild and primitive
neighborhood, though to some extent
slightly infected by modernization,
are yet very fair specimens of the hardy,
trusty clansmen of Scottish history, and
the present owners of Slains certainly
give them every reason to keep up the
old bonds of affectionate interest with
every one and everything belonging to
"the family." To my own observation
of the ancient seat of the Hays I owe
one of the most delightful recollections
of my life, that of a Christian home.
Not only the outward observances, but
the inner spiritual vitality of religion,
were there, while unselfish devotion to
all within the range of her influence or
authority marked the character of her
who was at the head of this little family
kingdom. The present head of the
house, a Hay to the backbone, has triumphantly
carried on the martial traditions
of his ancestry, and on the roll of
England's victorious sons at the battle
of the Alma his name is to be found.
He was there disabled by a wound that
shattered his right arm and cut short his
military career. Domestic happiness,
however, is no bad substitute for a brilliant
public life, and there are duties,
higher yet than a soldier's, that go far
toward making up that background of
rural prosperity which alone ensures the
grand effect of military successes. After
having done one's duty in the field, it is
to the full as noble, and perhaps more
patriotic, to turn to the duties of the
glebe, thereby finishing as a landlord
the work begun as a soldier.

It is a touching custom, hardly yet
obliterated in the district over which my
reminiscences have led me, for one peasant,
when coming upon another employed
in his lawful calling, thus to salute
him: "Guid speed the wark!" the rejoinder
being, in the same broad Buchan
dialect, "Thank ye: I wish ye
weel."

I can end these pages with no more
fitting sentiment. As a tribute of grateful
recollection to those who made my
days at Slains a happiness to me, and
in the first fresh sorrow of a deep bereavement
offered me distractions the
more alluring because the more associated
with Nature's changeless, silent
grandeur, I pen these lines, crowning
them with the homely Scottish wish that
wherever they are and whatever they do,
"Guid speed the wark!"

There is another version of her courtship, and this
a metrical one. This old ballad was not much known
beyond the district round Slains, and the old servants
and farmers on the estate were the chief depositaries
of the tradition. I have failed to secure more than a
very small fragment of it, which is itself only written
down from memory by one of these old women. The
rhyme and rhythm are both original:

Lady Mary Hay went to a wedding

Near the famous town of Reading:

There a gentleman she saw

That belonged to the law....

Here evidently there occurs a hiatus, during which
some account is probably begun of her unreturned
attachment, for a little later we find in the very primitive
manuscript from which we quote these words of
the countess:

I that have so many slighted,

I am at last—(unrequited?)

The story is now carried on in prose (my informant
having forgotten the text of the ballad), and says that
"Lady Mary wanted or challenged him to meet her
in a masquerade" (probably meaning a duel in disguise),
"and that his father told him to go." Neither
father nor son seems to have known the fair challenger's
rank, though the following words point to their being
aware of her sex, for the elder Falconer is represented
as saying,